Chip Industry Week In Review


Micron The memory maker rolled out a slew of announcements this week, including: Raised its planned U.S. investment to more than $250B through 2035, an incremental $50B above what was announced last June, with an ultimate goal of producing 40% of its DRAM in the U.S.; Planned new investments of $3B for U.S. IC supply-chain investments, including $500M in financing for GlobalWafers’ 3... » read more

Data Center AI Growth Faces Challenging Bottlenecks


AI is rocketing ahead. It is the biggest industrial revolution of our age. AI adoption is growing, but still most are at early stages of learning. Anthropic, the leading frontier model provider with an annualized revenue run rate (ARR) of ~$47 billion with OpenAI close behind at ~$30 billion (Forbes). Google Gemini revenues aren’t broken out but Google Gemini processes over 3.2 quadrillion... » read more

Chip Industry Week In Review


Dealmaking Amkor inked a 10-year agreement with TSMC to provide advanced packaging and test services in Arizona, tying TSMC’s U.S. fab expansion to domestic OSAT capacity. Trump said in a post that Apple will partner with Intel on chip design and production in the U.S., marking a second reported win for the chipmaker this month. Intel Foundry will also reportedly manufacture 3 million... » read more

Scaling ADAS To 10+ Cameras


By WonBae Bang, KiDong Sim, Weilung Lu, and Adrian Arcedera Introduction Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) are increasingly adopted by automotive manufacturers to enhance driving safety. These systems help drivers in the driving process, thereby increasing car and road safety. ADAS technologies include features such as adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning and automatic emer... » read more

Making On-Chip Photonics Manufacturable


Key Takeaways: System-level energy and bandwidth pressures are pulling optics into the package faster than the manufacturing flow can mature. Photonics combines front-end fabrication, materials, thermal, cleanliness, and test into one problem that can’t be solved domain by domain. Test is moving upstream because discovering an optical failure after final assembly forfeits every goo... » read more

Co-Packaged Optics Testing Faces Steep Data Center Ramp


Key Takeaways: Device interface board must balance flexibility in handling with customization for different optical connectors. Test fixtures should account for DUT socketing challenges, such as warpage, coupling, and interference. Advanced data management practices will help speed yield learning. Integrating photonic and electrical ICs into co-packaged optics (CPO) requires... » read more

AI Accelerator Testing Depends On DFT Innovations


Key Takeaways: I/O and lane repair capabilities are becoming critical to improving yield. System-level testing catches marginal defects and rare defects such as silent data corruption errors. Synopsys and TSMC developed a multi-die demo vehicle capable of full test, monitor, debug, and repair capability across the system’s lifecycle. The proliferation of accelerators in AI... » read more

HBM Shifts Testing Left To Preserve AI Chip Yield


Key Takeaways: A high-yield, known-good stack requires multiple test insertions. Known good stack testing poses challenges for power delivery and thermal management. The shift to HBM4 and HBM5 will increase the pressure for shift-left test flows. Taller high-bandwidth memory (HBM) stacks and tighter TSV pitch are impacting AI module yields. The solution is to push test furth... » read more

Chip Industry Week in Review


Advanced nodes and capacity The US Commerce Dept. told IC equipment makers to stop shipments to Hua Hong Group, China's No. 2 chipmaker, in order to protect America's lead, according to Reuters. Global AI competition is causing wafer and packaging shortages, but capacity increases are expected to come online later this year and in 2027 to ease the crunch, according to TrendForce. Leadi... » read more

When Semiconductor Materials Misbehave


Key Takeaways Material behavior in production depends on the process context that no development environment can fully replicate. In advanced packaging, the interactions that cross domain boundaries are increasingly where failures originate. The most accurate materials data is also the most commercially sensitive, leaving simulation models calibrated against generic inputs rather tha... » read more

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